


for the monsters that I've been

by Trojie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 08:48:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7795222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur hasn't, to Eames's knowledge, slept in the last seventy-two hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the monsters that I've been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [immoral_crow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/gifts).



> I promised Immoral_Crow a story, late at night my time while I was quite sleep-deprived (it's a long story. There's a laser involved). She asked for some hurt/comfort. It got rather out of hand!
> 
> I then made her beta-read her present because really, who better? 
> 
> Title from 'Sleep' by My Chemical Romance.

'Put the gun down, Arthur,' says Eames steadily.

Arthur blinks at him, and doesn't obey.

Arthur hasn't, to Eames's knowledge, slept in the last seventy-two hours. Before that, the grapevine says he was on a three-month industrial espionage job that ended … badly. Before that, there was something in Belize no-one has any details on except there's a persistent rumour a Mossad agent was involved. Before that, who even knows. Certainly not Eames, who makes it a point to never know too much about his, for want of a better word, colleagues.

But the gist of it is, Arthur has been working maybe six, nine months solid, and now he's got his nasty matte-black piece of fucking Tupperware, his stupid plastic Glock, jammed up against his own chin.

_This_ is why, every so often, Eames likes to quietly take a holiday from working. 

No-one knows the toxicity of Somnacin, or if they do, they're not sharing. All anyone seems to know is that sooner or later, if someone keeps working past the stage where they stop dreaming naturally, then ... they have this tendency to disappear from the active roster. Sometimes they might show up again, but usually in a body bag.

Rodriguez calls it _taking a sleeping pill_ , but then he always did have a sick sense of humour.

'Why are you in my hotel room, Eames?'

'Selfless concern for the maids you're going to traumatise in the morning,' says Eames drily. Arthur rolls his eyes. Because of course he has the sang-froid for that when he has a weapon trained on himself. 

Actually, Dom Cobb called Eames all in a lather yesterday morning Moscow time and basically ordered him to look for Arthur. 'You're the best there is at tracking people down,' he'd said. 'You know how fucking hard he can be to find.'

'If Arthur's lying low, he'll have a reason,' Eames had pointed out. 'And he'll be armed,' he'd added, because the safety of his own skin is important to him.

Cobb had sighed gustily down the line. 'I know. I just. I have a bad feeling about him this time, Eames.'

Cobb's hunches tend to be on the money, and Eames hasn't heard any two rumours about the Belize job that tallied. That never means anything good. So he'd agreed. 

It's not the first time he's gone after Arthur, truth be told. Arthur has this tendency to leap without looking because he's got so good at landings, and so he forgets that there needs to be something on the other side. 

Eames has got into the habit of catching him. Because Eames has lived a long time in dreamshare, you see. Keyword: lived. And some of the shit he's lived through he wouldn't have if Arthur hadn't metaphorically jumped, so. _No man is an island_ is bullshit, and John Donne was crap at geography, because whoever saw an island standing alone anyway?

'You know you won't wake up if you pull that trigger, don't you,' he says conversationally, leaning against the door. Arthur's perched on the edge of the bed, silhouetted against the early-morning Sydney skyline. If he goes through with what he's threatening, Eames thinks with a ghoulish pragmatism, at least most of the mess will end up on the mattress.

'I don't want to wake up,' Arthur says stonily. 'I - god. Fuck. I just want to _sleep.'_

Eames has seen a lot of shit in his life. But Arthur's expression is a deep dark well of horrors even Eames is hard pressed to put names to.

'That's not sleeping either,' Eames points out. He moves further into the room, idly, one hand in his pocket, the other out to run a finger over the delicate little vase of fake orchids on the dresser, the lamp with its sleek faux Art Deco base, Arthur's wallet. Arthur's eyes track him as he moves.

'It'll do the job.'

'Not the way you want it to.' Eames reaches that single finger towards Arthur's totem, red plastic almost glowing on the bedside table in the dawn light from the window, and Arthur makes a move to stop him, entirely on reflex, that creates an opening.

Eames _strikes_ \- snaps the Glock out of Arthur's grip and shoves him back into the bed, away from it wherever it landed. His hand ends up around Arthur's throat.

'No!' Arthur cries out, and he struggles, so hard Eames is worried he'll choke himself, but without his usual skill and poise. He's still wicked strong, but he's slow. Dazed. Sleep-deprived, in a word.

Eames risks a look over his shoulder and sees the gun has come to rest half under the sofa on the other side of the room. Perfect. He gentles his hold, at least in manner - curves both hands around to cup Arthur's face, even while he shifts his body, bulkier than Arthur's at the moment, to straddle Arthur's hips and pin him down. 'I can help you sleep,' he says. 'You know how.'

Because this isn't the first time Arthur's needed Eames's help. It's just that the other two times, he saw it coming, and asked. 

'It won't work,' Arthur says in a low voice, not making eye contact. 'It's too much, Eames. You gotta let me handle this one.'

'Blowing your brains out over hotel sheets isn't handling it, Arthur.' Eames struggles to keep his voice even, to not shout. 'Let me _help_ , for Christ's sake. Or at least let me try. I'm here now, I might as well. If it doesn't work you have my permission to do as you bloody well please.'

Arthur closes his eyes and shakes his head, like he's denying Eames's logic, but Eames isn't fucking well moving, and after a moment Arthur looks at him again, something like defeat in his eyes. 'I don't - you don't know what I did,' he says. 'It was bad, Eames.'

Eames kisses him then, finally. Cradles his face, watches those too-tired eyes flutter shut again, and kisses him softly and slowly, almost chastely, over and over. They're pecks of his lips against Arthur's, really - here now, gone the next moment, until Arthur breaks and gasps, and Eames can catch that chapped, hard-bitten lower lip between his teeth.

Because he doesn't care. The good guys die and the bad guys win. That's a quote from somewhere, most likely, but it's apt. Who cares? Maybe Arthur was bad this time, maybe he'll be good next time, maybe karma's a lie and fate's a bitch and all there is in the end is sex and money and Somnacin until you've had enough of one or the other or all three. 

Eames's drug of choice is sex, out of the three. For Arthur, he'll be a dealer.

Arthur's everything buttons up, tiny pearl slivers that Eames can undo one by one, and they're a blessing twice over. They force him to go slowly, to touch Arthur in fits and starts and snatches only, and they mean he can bare Arthur to his gaze with no need for wriggling or lifting, no pulling things overhead or needing to break their kiss.

Arthur kisses like a drowning man swimming for the surface, or maybe that's only like this, now, when he's at the end of his rope. Eames just tries to make sure he's breathing, and make sure that he has a reason to keep doing it.

Arthur's clothes are a flayed pile around and underneath him. He's glorious nude, something Eames would love to paint, all that ropey scar tissue and lean muscle, puddled against silk and wool and Egyptian cotton. A photo wouldn't do it justice - you'd need oils, a palette knife, you'd have to throw the paint at the canvas and slice it off at speed if you ever wanted to really capture the chiaroscuro of him, wanton in your bed.

Good men don't fuck like Eames does. But bad ones don't stare like Arthur does when he's doing it.

Eames leans back on his heels and wraps a hand around Arthur's straining cock. Arthur arcs into the touch like metal on electrodes, sharp and sudden, and Eames strokes him as slowly as he can. 

His own cock languishes fat and heavy in his trousers, twitching and ready, but it isn't time yet.

Arthur sobs, after a while. Eames wrings the noises out of him, until he judges that Arthur is on the edge of coming, and then he lets go. Arthur swears in four languages - blasphemy, obscenity, bad words - and claws at Eames' wrist.

'Patience, pet,' Eames says softly. He runs his hand up Arthur's inner thigh. Even here isn't free of marks - a bullet graze that must have come perilously close to killing him. Eames tongues at it slowly, lovingly. When he puts his mouth on Arthur's cock, Arthur swears in a fifth language, one Eames doesn't know.

Arthur's shuddering now, like he can't help himself. He's giving over, he's so close to ready. Eames fumbles the lube out of his pocket.

(He'd brought it just in case, just like the tranquilisers, the handcuffs, and the forged passport with Arthur's photo and the name Harry Whittington in it.)

Arthur's not relaxed, despite everything and despite how much his body's clamouring to be fucked. Eames works his fingers in slowly, uses too much lube, all the lube he brought, til it smears down Arthur's thighs and there are four fingers in Arthur's arse. Eames kisses everywhere he can reach that isn't a mess of plasticky slick, and then kneels up to press his way into Arthur's body, trousers still hooked on his hips, belt buckle jangling softly as he bottoms out. He uses his weight, spreads Arthur's arms above his head, pinning him by the wrists, because he wants Arthur anchored.

But Arthur won't stay still to be fucked, pushes too hard and too shaky into every move Eames makes, and that's no good, it robs Eames of control and he needs that, more than anything right now, so he pulls out and turns Arthur over. 

One hand keeps Arthur's wrists held tight in the small of his back, the other pulls Arthur by the hip, lets Eames keep their pace glacial slow, but hard, deep, out-strokes long until only the very tip of Eames's cock is still keeping Arthur's hole open for him, then in-strokes certain and sure and unstoppable. Arthur lets himself be pounded, and just moans. Over and over into the pillow he says 'fuck, yes, Eames, God, don't stop, please, don't stop, don't you dare stop, Eames, _Eames -_ ' until he clenches around Eames like a vise and thrusts his cock into the empty air and makes a mess all over the bed after all.

Eames's orgasm comes slow, prolonged, pumped into Arthur's tight, tortured body and forced further in with every shaking aftershock, because Eames can't stop, won't stop fucking him. Arthur had a gun to his own head when Eames walked in here, this isn't anything like him being of sound mind, but Eames won't stop unless Arthur asks him to and he knows damn well Arthur won't. 

Eames manhandles Arthur onto his side afterwards, staying in him, wrapping him up in his arms. The fight, finally, has gone out of him.

'Just sleep,' Eames tells Arthur gently, breathing the word into his ear, but he already is.


End file.
